


where no one goes

by skyways_are_highways



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- How to Train Your Dragon, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Book 1: Water (Avatar), Gen, Teen for language, and beyond but starts during book one, and ik you will, azula is gently bullied into becoming a better person by her pet lizard, httyd au that gets looser as it goes on, no beta we die like jet, this is so self indulgent it's not even funny, zukka if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-25 17:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30092307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyways_are_highways/pseuds/skyways_are_highways
Summary: Whatever it is, it lands on the outskirts of Caldera, on the other side of the almost-wall that is the volcano’s edge. No one saw where it landed, or even in general. No one even knows that it was more of a crash than an actual landing.No one except Azula, anyway.___In which Azula laments her lack of a goldfish, runs away, learns some practical skills, disappoints her father, finds the Avatar, narrowly misses becoming the first Fire Nation citizen to infiltrate Ba Sing Se, and tames a dragon- though not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & The Gaang (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	where no one goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While most kids fell asleep reading about fairy tales and magical beasts, Azula was reading about the most important battles in Fire Nation history. She was smarter and better for it, of course, in her current situation, Azula thinks fairy tales might have been more helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couldnt stop thinking about azula getting a dragon so i decided to give her one <3

Whatever it is, it lands on the outskirts of Caldera, on the other side of the almost-wall that is the volcano’s edge. No one saw where it landed, or even in general. No one even knows that it was more of a crash than an actual landing. 

No one except Azula, anyway. 

She hadn’t even meant to hit it. She’d just been wandering the woods outside the capital when there’d been a horrible loud noise. 

Luckily, no one had been there to see her jump.

No one had been there to see the big blast of fire she’d shot at it, either.

Azula _doesn’t_ get startled. It was her reflexes. They’re just that good. 

So she’d shot some fire at it, and then there’d been another awful noise, and maybe some crashing of trees, but it didn’t really matter, because Azula had already turned around to run home. 

She wasn’t _scared._ Azula doesn’t get startled, and she doesn’t get nervous. She relies entirely on instinct and reflexes, and they’d paid off. 

_(She’d been startled. Ask any of the iguana-parrots who’d watched._

_In her defense, the noise_ had _been awful and loud and terrible.)_

Azula only realized that the noise sort of sounded like a roar _after_ she’d calmed down. 

It could have been something dangerous or threatening, and if she thought about it hard enough, the Avatar’s bison _probably_ roared, so it only made sense that she went to check it out. 

The next morning, covered in dirt and leaves with a stick in her hair, Azula is sort of wishing that she’d done something different.

The thing about the volcano surrounding Caldera is that it’s _huge_ . So even if Azula knows that whatever it is she’s looking for went down somewhere behind the palace, maybe even to the East- _ish,_ that’s still a lot of ground to cover.

And she has been covering it. For the past three hours.

Azula is supposed to be good at this sort of thing, but she’s barely fourteen. One’s tracking abilities make little difference when one is four and a half feet tall. It’s not like she can ask for help, either. 

She’s contemplating how horrible and irritating and tiring and messy her life is when she sees it. Except, she doesn’t _really_ see it.

First, she hits herself in the face with a branch. 

_Then_ she sees it. 

The tree in front of her is half toppled, nearly split down the middle, and there are great long slashes on the side she’s standing next to. The ground is ripped up as well. The whole trail stretches forward before it disappears over the other side of a rock. 

_Bingo_.

There’s a faint snuffling from the other side of the rock, and Azula thinks that she’s done it. She hit the Avatar and made him crash just outside the Capital, and she’ll go home and tell her father and everything will be perfect. 

So when she pokes her head out over the side and is instead faced with some sort of long snake-looking thing, safe to say she’s surprised. 

The rock isn’t just a rock, either. Apparently, she’s standing on the edge of what can only be a crater, leftover from whenever the volcano last erupted. 

Azula looks over the edge again, more slowly this time. It’s not a snake at all. 

It’s long and scaly, sure, but last Azula checked, snakes don’t have wings. Or legs. 

And now that she’s _really_ thinking about it, snakes don’t get that big, either. 

Azula is Fire Nation. She grew up, same as everyone else, hearing stories about dragons and firebending and a lot of fire-based things, so it makes sense that Azula can recognize a dragon. The only problem with that is that _there are no dragons._ Haven’t been for years.

Her Uncle killed the last one. There aren’t any more dragons.

And while this thing is big enough that it can’t be a snake, it’s not quite big enough to really be a dragon either. It’s taller and longer than Azula by quite a bit, sure, but every dragon Azula has ever heard of was a great towering thing, the size of a building. 

_This_ fits quite nicely in the crater it’s fallen into. Reasonably, it can’t be a dragon.

Dragons are also not brown. They’re read or blue, and if Azula is remembering the story her mother told her correctly, sometimes purple. But then the sun hits the thing properly and Azula realizes that it’s not black at all.

It’s a deep red, _nearly_ brown, but definitely still red. Like dried blood.

It can’t be a dragon. But it also can’t really be anything else. Azula leans forward another inch or so, and there’s a metallic _shing_ as the knife she carries slips out of its hold and slides down the rock, landing squarely in front of the _dragon,_ because _who is she kidding?_ It’s clearly a dragon. 

The dragon looks at the knife, and before Azula has time to duck again it looks straight up at her. Its eyes are gold. 

Azula doesn’t get frightened easily, or ever, really. But Azula is not often confronted with a dragon. She can be forgiven, just this once. 

The dragon bares its teeth, which are long and sharp and maybe stained a little red, if she squints, and growls something low and terrible, before whirling around. The wings flap and it takes off, but instead of going up and over the edge in what Azula imagines could’ve been very majestic, it throws itself helplessly at the sides of the crater and tries to scramble up to the top.

It falls, tries again, and only succeeds in maybe hurting its foot. 

“Just fly away, you useless thing,” Azula murmurs, a little mesmerized, because even if she’s never seen one before, dragons are meant to be frightening, and this one just seems sort of pathetic. 

Its tail flicks wildly as it tries and fails again to climb its way out, and Azula catches sight of something red and raw looking at the end of it. 

Azula is sure that there are supposed to be two things on the end of its tail, and in place of one, this dragon has nothing but a burn. 

Azula wonders, very faintly, if that was her fault. 

The dragon glances back up at her, and this time Azula does have time to duck before it roars. 

She should tell her father, or anyone, really, that she found a dragon. Maybe if she killed it, her Uncle’s title would go to her. Princess Azula, Dragon of the West. She quite likes the sound of that.

But then again, it’s a small dragon, there’s almost certainly something wrong with it, and it can barely get four feet off the ground before it inevitably crashes. Killing this dragon might not get her the recognition she wants. 

She might be better off just waiting. Waiting for what, she’s not entirely sure.

It might get bigger or more impressive, or it might just die on its own and Azula can take the credit with minimal effort on her part. Dragons are also useful.

Azula’s not an idiot. She knows that this war has been going on too long (it’s called the Hundred Year War for a reason), and even the Fire Nation is struggling by now. The dragon might be an asset. Killing it so quickly might be a bad idea.

Her father would kill it, she knows. But her father is honestly not great at thinking things through. She _might_ be better off keeping it hidden until the dragon is useful. 

Useful for science, at least. It can’t even fly. If she kills it herself there wouldn’t be much left to study, anyway. 

Leaving it here is probably the best option.

Azula doesn’t poke her head out, because she’s learned her lesson, and the roaring is quite loud, but she says, “You should be grateful, you know,” to the thing from over her shoulder as she walks away. The dragon makes a strange snorting noise that Azula decides isn’t aimed at her.

Belatedly she remembers where her knife is. It’s not like the dragon can use it, she reasons, and she’s not going to be dumb enough to go and try to grab it. The dragon can keep the knife. She doesn’t want to get near the claws, anyway.

___

When she goes back the next day, the dragon is splashing furiously in the tiny pond at the bottom of the crater. It raises its head, and in between its teeth is a measly looking little fish, which quickly flops its way to freedom. 

The dragon _would_ get hungry, wouldn’t it?

There’s a rock slightly down the side of the crater’s edge that would get her closer to the dragon, but not close enough to get eaten. Azula slides down as smoothly as she can while the dragon stares straight at her.

“Well?” Azula rolls her eyes, “You’re not going to eat if you give up, brainless.”

The dragon looks, for a moment, positively murderous, but eventually turns its attention back to making a lot of pointless noise in the pond. _It’s not going to catch anything,_ Azula realizes after the routine has played out four or so times in front of her.

Letting the dragon starve _would_ be a little counterproductive. 

If anyone thinks it’s strange that the Princess leaves the kitchens with a basket of raw, wet fish the next morning, none of them say anything. Azula supposes she’d get them in trouble if they did, but then she would likely have to explain what it is she’s doing with a ton of raw fish. 

Azula sits on the closer rock in the morning and throws down a fish. The dragon sniffs it a little suspiciously, then looks back up at Azula.

“I’m not going to poison you,” Azula says, “This really is just for you to eat.”

The dragon pokes its tongue out, long and forked, and licks the fish once. Another glance at Azula, another lick, and then it’s scooping up the fish and Azula watches it disappear down the dragon’s throat. 

The dragon sits almost like a pet deer-dog, which seems like it would be uncomfortable with how long the dragon’s neck is. It occurs to Azula only a minute later that the dragon is waiting for another fish. She grabs one of the less slimy-looking ones out of the basket and tosses it down. The dragon steps forward and catches it before it hits the ground.

Azula raises an eyebrow. “Not bad,” she says, “Guess you’re not _that_ stupid.”

The dragon flicks its tail, unimpressed. 

Azula loses track of time, throwing the dragon fish and waiting for it to catch them. At the bottom of the basket is an eel, to which Azula wrinkles her nose. They aren’t that good, not even cooked, but she’d been trying to spread out the types of fish she brought. Azula holds the thing as far from her face as she can manage and throws it down to the dragon.

The dragon wrinkles its nose, too, and lets out a low growl. When it looks up at Azula it snarls, slinking backward away from the eel.

“Shit,” Azula breathes. They’d been doing so well, the dragon hadn’t growled at her once or even tried to fly up at her. She has to move the eel.

Azula slowly, carefully, slides down the last bit of distance until she’s in the crater. It feels almost like a cage, being trapped down here with an angry dragon. 

The dragon eyes her but stays in its spot. 

Azula stays low to the ground, inching toward the thing, all the while muttering things like, _“Oh, I know, I don’t like them either,”_ and _“At least you’ve got good taste, even if you’re stupid,”_ and _“Come on, brainless, it’s not as though it’s going to eat you.”_

She’s near enough that she can pick up the eel. She stands, holding the nasty thing by the tail, and the dragon snarls again. Azula feels, abruptly, very small. 

“I’m just going to throw it away,” Azula says, hoping to Agni that the dragon can understand her enough to know that she’s not going to do anything. “Don’t worry, see? I’m just putting it back in the water where it belongs.” She’s all out of witty remarks and insults, she realizes, standing only a few feet from an angry dragon. 

She chucks the eel into the pond, and for a moment Azula thinks the dragon is going to attack her with the way it jumps at the movement, but instead it relaxes, letting out a low humming noise. 

“There, that wasn’t terrible, was it? Just because I don’t like eels doesn’t mean that _I_ throw a fit whenever I’m confronted with one, you stupid thing.”Azula crosses her arms, feeling much better now that the dragon has calmed down. “I can’t believe that you, a dragon, are a coward. I never would’ve assumed,” she’s rambling now, because she’s slowly realizing that she doesn’t know exactly how to get out of the crater. 

She doesn’t see the dragon’s tail inch toward her.

“You’re just a brainless beast, you know that?” Azula says, all nerves, “Not even all that scary.”

The dragon flicks its tail at her legs, and Azula falls face-first into the pond.

When she finally stands up, she gets the idea that if the dragon could laugh at her, it would. Her hair’s come undone, and she’s soaked through. “ _Oh_ , of all the things you could’ve done you horrible, stupid, great-! “

The dragon knocks her back under the water. 

It takes Azula longer to stand up this time, and she’s sure she looks like a wreck. She points one finger at the dragon, “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance! I’ll do it now, just you watch, see what happens!”

The dragon, to its credit, doesn’t throw her in again. It looks almost bored, which makes Azula yell more, and lays down facing away from her. 

Azula realizes that she’s being ignored. By a dragon. 

She climbs out of the crater eventually, and when she gets back to the palace with her empty basket and soaking hair, nobody asks any questions. 

___

If Azula ever wants to get near the dragon without having to worry about losing her head, she needs to get the dragon used to her. 

That’s what she’d told herself that morning, anyway, even though now, sitting on top of a rock in the crater near the pond, it’s more uncomfortable than she’d like.

The dragon could get up to her, easily. 

Maybe this whole thing is more about getting _Azula_ used to the dragon, not the other way around. She’d made sure not to bring any eels this time, at least, and the dragon seemed calmer for it. 

“You’re just a garbage can,” Azula says, tossing down another fish to the dragon. “Nothing in there except food, I bet, brainless.”

The dragon reaches its long tail around the back of the boulder and flicks the back of her head., not looking up from the fish.

Azula grumbles and rubs at where she’d been hit, but doesn’t say anything else. Maybe getting slapped by a dragon’s tail isn’t worth the insults. 

“Fine,” she says. “Eat everything.”

She wonders if the dragon has a name. Probably not, considering it’s clearly stupid enough to assume that Azula isn’t a threat. 

“I need to call you something aside from ‘dragon,’” Azula throws another fish. “You wouldn’t happen to have any suggestions?”

The dragon snorts and swallows the fish whole. 

When Azla and her brother were younger, they’d begged and begged for a pet. Some bird, or dog, or even a bear, like the Earth King had. The closest they’d ever gotten was a resigned, “Maybe,” from their mother when Zuko had asked for a goldfish. Their mother had disappeared three months later, so they never did get one. 

So, Azula has minimal experience naming pets. 

Not that the dragon is a pet. It’s just a huge lizard Azula is stuck babysitting until her next move becomes clear. It’s a strategic thing, more complicated than a goldfish. Goldfish don’t breathe fire, or have claws, or really sharp teeth, and all things considered, maybe Azula should have tried a _little_ harder to get a goldfish.

“Well, then,” Azula crosses her arms after the dragon doesn’t say anything. She didn’t think it _would,_ but it’s the principle of the thing. “I suppose I’ll have to just keep calling you Brainless.”

The dragon’s tail hits her again, though this time it’s hard enough to send her flying off the rock and into the pond. Azula sputters and then ascends into shrieking when the beast lifts its long neck to the top of the rock and pulls the basket of fish down with it. 

“Oh, I see how it is! Fine! your name is Brainless and there’s nothing you can do about it, you horrible little-” and Azula nearly screams when the dragon trips her _again._

Brainless tosses aside the now-empty basket and stomps off to the other end of the crater. 

___

It has been three whole days of feeding Brainless nothing but fish and getting thrown into the pond. Azula would say she’s had enough, but for some reason, she keeps going to see the dragon. It’s nice to have the company, she supposes, not that she _needs_ it. Azua is perfectly capable of functioning on her own, thank you. 

But it’s not as though she has many friends, let alone friends she’s seen _recently,_ and her brother has been gone for years. The servants rarely speak to her, and she can easily go weeks without seeing her father, despite living in the same damn building. She’s not pathetic enough to call _Brainless_ her only friend, though.

The dragon won’t even let Azula within a few feet, and even then it’s only if she’s carrying fish. 

Azula knows that there’s no point in trying to make the dragon _like_ her, considering they’re only stuck together because Azula thinks Brainless would be helpful to the war effort, but it could be who knows how long until that plan pays off. 

Being able to touch the thing might prove useful later on. Which is how Azula finds herself in the palace library, reading scrolls about _pets._

Brainless _isn’t_ a pet, and Azula thinks that even the dragon would take offense to being called one, but there aren’t any scrolls about training dragons. Azula checked. A few times. 

The only person in recent, verifiable history to have a dragon was Avatar Roku. Azula doesn’t think that he would’ve made a handy guide. Why the palace has any scrolls about pets in the first place is confusing enough, because as far as Azula could tell when she was younger, the only things worth reading were about firebending and military strategy. 

While most kids fell asleep reading about fairy tales and magical beasts, Azula was reading about the most important battles in Fire Nation history. She was smarter and better for it, of course, in her current situation, Azula thinks fairy tales might have been more helpful.

She can’t ask anyone for help either, not that she would stoop so low. Dragons are supposed to be extinct, and if she did tell anybody that there was one in what was practically the palace’s backyard, Azula has a feeling that it wouldn’t go over well. 

The scrolls don’t end up being useful, anyway. Deer-dogs and iguana-parrots aren’t anything like a dragon.

__

Azula is riding the high of not getting knocked into the pond by the dragon when she runs into her father for the first time in a week. 

It’ll be fine, Azula is a fantastic liar, and she’s not even bragging.

The Firelord looks her up and down. He doesn’t quite frown, but it’s close enough. “You look like a mess. Clean up and see that it doesn’t happen again.”

“I-” Azula starts. Was she a mess? It’s possible, honestly. What, with all the running through the forest and back every day and getting chucked into that nasty little pond (she’s pretty sure the eel is still floating around in there somewhere), even she can admit that she might have lowered her standards for herself. 

The Firelord doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but Azula thinks he’d quite like to.

“Yes, sir,” she manages, hoping she sounds at least somewhat normal. 

He walks away without another word, his usual herd of servants and advisors trailing behind him. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. Azula can usually speak to her father with zero issues.

Azula’s always been a fantastic liar, but maybe that has more to do with the fact that she rarely has anything to hide.

___

Azula is lighting moss-covered rocks on fire and chucking them into the pond when Brainless sneaks up behind her. 

_(It’s not_ really _sneaky, because Azula did know that the dragon was somewhere behind her eating fish, but she jumps nonetheless.)_

“I don’t know what to do with you, Brainless,” Azula says, tossing another rock into the air, lighting it with her fingers, and throwing it hard into the pond. Brainless huffs.

She’s starting to wish she’d never shot down the stupid thing in the first place. She wants to tell the Firelord but can’t, and she definitely can’t tell anyone else. It’s just her, the forest, and the huge flying lizard. 

Azula crouches down to pick up more rocks. Brainless sniffs somewhere behind her. 

Speaking of flying lizards. Azula cranes her neck to get a look at the burn on the dragon’s tail. It’s not as red or angry, maybe even healed by now, but the dragon is still definitely missing another little wing thingy. 

“Can you still not fly?” Azula asks. Brainless, unsurprisingly, doesn’t answer. Azula lights another rock on fire and waves it in front of Brainless’s face. 

She throws it up and to the left, and the dragon attempts to chase it down. 

It’s as Azula suspected. The dragon still can’t fly. “We’ll have to do something about that,” Azula sighs, “If you’re ever going to be useful.”

Azula turns back to her rocks, and there’s a thump next to her. She turns to see Brainless sitting perfectly, and at the dragon’s feet is the rock. 

No longer on fire, but still. 

Azula kicks the rock since her hands are full, and Brainless looks at her with almost a disappointed face. Azula shrugs, “Throw it yourself,” she says, “I’m busy with my own problems.” Brainless gives something that could’ve been a shrug, if not for the fact that dragons can’t understand words, and wanders off to find a rock, presumably. 

Five minutes and a lot of tiny pebbles thrown in the pond later, Brainless walks back, carrying a massive rock the size of Azula’s torso. The dragon opens its mouth and sets the rock on fire, before doing its best to throw it into the pond. 

Azula, of course, gets hit by the splash. 

There is, apparently, a lot of water involved when it comes to dragons, Azula thinks, and if she were to write something about the subject she would be sure to include that. And underline it. A few times. 

“I hate you,” Azula says matter of factly, spinning on her heel and going to sit on top of her rock again. “You’re terrible and I hate you.”

Brainless seems unbothered.

Though, Azula supposes the rock thing was pretty clever of the dragon. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”

Brainless snorts and Azula decides that she isn’t wrong. Brainless is brainless. 

“We should do something about the flying,” Azula says, thinking out loud. “I don’t know what, though. If you haven’t regrown your tail already I don’t think you ever will.”

Lizards can regrow their tails, can’t they? The limited amount of information about dragons Azula can get her hands on doesn't mention anything like that. Maybe dragons aren’t as similar to lizards as Azula thought. 

She's just contemplating this when it starts raining. 

A drizzle, at first, but enough for Brainless to take one big wing and cover its scaly head. 

“You’re such a brat,” Azula snorts. “It’s hardly raining.”

As if on cue, the sky cracks, and then the rain comes down in buckets. Brainless would probably be laughing at her if it were possible. 

Azula holds her hands over her head, though they don’t do much to stop the rain. It doesn’t matter anyway, she was already soaked from the splash. 

Brainless makes a sighing noise and raises the other wing, though over the ground instead. Azula knows an invitation when she sees one, but she isn’t sure if she wants to get that close to the dragon yet. 

It somehow rains harder. Azula very much wants to go home. She takes a deep breath and marches over to stand under the dragon’s wing. 

Brainless looks at her expectantly.

“You’re not so bad,” Azula allows, because she refuses to be bullied into _thanking_ a dragon for anything. Brainless’s tail flicks her ankle. 

Azula absently reaches behind her to pat the dragon, but she hears a snarl before she even gets close. She yanks her hand back. “Understood,” Azula says, trying to keep her voice steady. “No touching.”

 _Except if it’s to throw me into the nearest body of water,_ Azula thinks. 

Azula remembers what started most of this in the first place. She should be able to touch the dragon, just for practicality’s sake. So Azula tries again. 

Brainless growls, but Azula doesn’t move her hand from where it’s hovering an inch away from Brainless’s back leg. The dragon’s head is in front of her now _(damn that long neck)_ , and Azula can feel it breathing on her face.

Azula thinks that maybe she should try to keep the dragon- and maybe herself, too- calm.

“Don’t worry,” Azula says, barely above a whisper. It’s still raining hard. “It’s just me, Brainless. We’re friends, right?”

They aren’t. Azula isn’t friends with a dragon. But the dragon can’t understand her, so it doesn’t matter what she says. 

Brainless stops growling but doesn’t move. 

“You’re a good girl,” Azula puts her other hand in front of her. Brainless eyes it suspiciously. “Or, well- Maybe you aren’t a girl?” Brainless’s head inches backward. Talking out loud helps. Makes her forget that she’s trying to poke an angry, big, fire-breathing dragon. “I’m certainly not going to check, and I don’t think you care one way or another, so let’s just say you’re a girl.”

Brainless, to her credit, stops baring her teeth.

“So, anyway,” Azula thinks that looking away might help. She’d probably take having her hand bitten off better if she doesn’t have to watch. “You’re a very good girl, Brainless.”

Azula can just hear Brainless’s breathing. Is it actually warm, or is Azula imagining things?

“It’s been nearly two weeks of all this. I haven’t hurt you yet, though I suppose you can’t tell time, what with how empty your head mu-” Brainless shifts forward, and for two terrible seconds Azula thinks she’s about to die, but then Azula’s still sort of wet hand meets Brainless’s scaly head.

“Oh,” Azula says, looking up at the dragon. Brainless’s eyes are closed. Azula gives the dragon’s nose a tentative stroke. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Brainless leans into it and makes a humming noise, pushing her huge head into Azula’s arms, until she’s stuck practically holding it. Azula is already sick of this new touching thing.

“Well hang on, this is unnecessary,” Azula groans. “You’re too big, I should consider bringing you less fish-”

And Azula supposes she must get too cocky, because before she can finish her sentence, Brainless is using her head to push Azula over and into the pond.

___

The palace kitchens have taken to leaving her basket of fish outside the courtyard door. It’s convenient at first, but then she realizes that it means people have noticed. 

Hypothetically, the staff noticing isn’t necessarily a death sentence, but that just means that other people might notice too. Notice that she’s spending most of her time out, and takes a huge thing of fish somewhere every day, and comes back smelling like the forest and pond water and sometimes sulfur.

_(Firebending smells like campfires. Dragon fire, Azula is learning, smells like the volcano.)_

No one else has found Brainless yet, though.

Azula isn’t dumb enough to attribute it to anything but luck. The crater isn’t very hidden, and neither is the massive dragoon sitting in the middle of it. She’s taken to walking there on different routes. The last thing she wants is some stumbling across her trail and using it to find Brainless. 

She hasn’t run into your father again since that time in the halls. Usually, an extended absence means that there’s something important going on.

No one updates Azula on news from the war, not unless she’s needed for something. She hasn’t been needed for a long time. Her father keeps telling her that someday she’ll be sent out to hold a command or search for the Avatar, whichever her stupid brother fails at first.

Sometimes she wonders how Zuko is doing. Last time she saw him she was eleven. He clearly hasn’t found the Avatar yet, or she would’ve heard about that. She wonders if whatever he’s doing is more interesting than sneaking off every day to go hang out with a dragon. 

She suspects not. 

Brainless has taken to swishing her tail back and forth when Azula comes to feed her in the mornings. It’s fine in theory, except for the fact she nearly knocks Azula over every time, and always flings about one fish on accident. 

The touching thing is also more work than Azula thought it would be. Now, before Azula can go sit up on her rock, she has to _pet_ the beast. 

She always imagined that dragons were fierce and angry and pretty much nothing else. It takes some getting used to, the idea of a dragon begging for pets. Azula has a feeling that if she told her younger self that this is what she’d be doing with her time, she wouldn’t believe it.

Brainless doesn’t seem to notice that she’s a disgrace to her species. But it’s not like anyone’s going to get upset with her for it. Dragons aren’t supposed to exist anymore. 

But Brainless is there. In front of her. With the tails of at least two fish hanging out of her mouth. 

Azula sighs. “You’re bad at being a dragon. You can’t even _fly_.”

Azula is abruptly very grateful that Brainless can’t talk, otherwise, the dragon might point out that it is directly Azula’s fault that she can’t fly. 

“I keep meaning to do something about that,” Azula says. “The wound is healed. You need whatever it is I… burned off.”

Brainless shifts her tail closer to Azula’s feet. Whatever is at the end _(another thing about dragons being allegedly extinct, is that there’s no proper terminology)_ is burned away at one side, that’s still the same. It’s almost feathery looking. 

Azula crosses her arms and resigns herself to an annoying future. “I guess I’m going to need to figure that out.”

Brainless swishes her tail and huffs. 

“Oh, stop whining,” Azula waves a hand, “It won’t be _that_ hard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh i have no clue how long this fic is gonna be but whatever cross that bridge when we come to it
> 
> tumblr: @theleftdualdaosword


End file.
